RJ Pittman Transcript
Clint Betts
RJ, thank you so much for coming on the show. It means a lot to have you here. You're the chairman and CEO of Matterport, which I want to get to, but you have an impressive resume, like the who's who of tech in incredible roles. You were the director of product management at Google. You were the head of worldwide e-commerce platform at Apple. You were the chief product officer at eBay in probably the most interesting time of eBay actually, between 2013 and 2018. Then, you left eBay and, in 2018, became the chairman and CEO of Matterport. So why don't we start with who you are and how you got to where you are today?
RJ Pittman
Well, thanks for having me on the show. This is great, Clint. Good to see you and appreciate the intro. Maybe part of how I got to at least some of those destinations you talked about along my journey is the 15 years before that. I have been a guy in the startup trenches since I was nine years old. I think I knew that technology was my calling at a pretty early age. I wrote my first business plan at age 14 and was turned down multiple times by my lead financer, which happened to be my dad. Eventually he took mercy on me and funded this crazy idea that I was going to transform photocopy shops into desktop publishing juggernauts with this great new invention called the Apple Macintosh.
So this was circa 1985, '86, just after Apple and Steve brought that great groundbreaking product out, and the rest they say is history. I actually did go forth and start transforming photocopy shops in a small town in Northern Michigan. And kept that entrepreneurial streak alive all through school, through college. And ultimately after college, I was in the thick of it building a series of companies right before the dawn of the web.
The internet was in full swing, but the World Wide Web really came on the scene in '93, '94, which was right when I was on my way out into the world in Silicon Valley and seeing what we could do to disrupt some markets and industries.
Clint Betts
That's incredible. And was it surreal going to work for Apple given that's kind of the thing that started it all for you?
RJ Pittman
It was pretty full circle experience. I have to say, it was about 30 years full circle by the time I set foot in the doors. And I will tell you, on the one hand it felt like I'd come a long way to get to that point, but then it was an entirely new beginning again. And this was a very interesting period of time for Apple, experiencing an extraordinary inflection point of growth. So 2010, the iPhone had only been out for a couple of years, and the first product that I was part of launching was the iPad. So we hadn't seen a tablet done the right way until 2010, and so many interesting, groundbreaking innovations from there. And having a front row seat to innovation at that kind of scale is really one of a kind.
I mean, that's what I think all of us entrepreneurs at heart are really driven to do in some way, shape, or form. Where can you get that front-row seat to high impact? I had some great training in my own startups, but never at this scale except for the company right before that when I was at Google. Also, during a very transformative period in the company's history, we saw just ridiculous exponential growth in a very short period of time that probably no company in history has ever experienced. Being part of that as well was very humbling and challenging, but it was also a terrific growth opportunity.
Clint Betts
You know what's crazy? It's been 14 years since the iPad came out, that's nothing. Isn't that fascinating between just the advancements in technology, and compute, and everything that's happened in 14 years, it's kind of mind-blowing. And you've had a front row seat to this continuing progress that's happening in technology through these companies like Google, and Apple, and being in Silicon Valley, building there, which is where you're at with Matterport.
What is that like? I'd love to hear you think, 14 years, is this crazy? What is happening? The advancement seems like a breathtaking pace. And every day, with AI and various things, it seems like we're only growing more exponentially.
RJ Pittman
Yeah, I think there's a new algorithm. Moore's law needs to be updated because we're moving at a new exponential level of Moore's law for sure. Sensor technology. Look at where we are with self-driving cars. Everybody just a few years ago wrote it all off as an impossibility. Too risky, cars going to be piled up on the highways, fatalities through the roof, all this sort of thing.
And I will tell you here in San Francisco, I have two now-rising teenage kids who have never been in their own Uber, but I'm very comfortable putting them in a Waymo. Self-driving car, send them where they want to go. It is fantastic. And I couldn't imagine telling you that even two years ago at the rate at which this technology is progressing, much less 14 years ago. Right?
Clint Betts
Yeah, it's nuts. And what I think is interesting is you've also kind of seen the rise and fall, if you can call it a fall and rise again, of Silicon Valley, right? Where you're at has changed so dramatically in 14 years. What has that been like to see?
RJ Pittman
And I'll tell you, I've been in San Francisco for the bulk of that, in fact, all of that time. And so I've been through the boom and bust of '99, 2000, the dot-com bust. We were in the middle of that with several different companies going through it. A few successes, a few spectacular crashes and burns, all the battle scars you need to keep going and onto the next.
But the amazing thing that I will say both about the city but also about the industry is the resilience. It is a cycle, much like the real estate cycle, which is related to what I'm doing at the intersection of technology and real estate with Matterport, where almost every 10 years you'll go through this boom-bust cycle. It's almost a perfect sine curve.
But if you zoom that curve out, it's a sine wave up into the right. Even in real estate, absolutely in technology, this is the cycle of innovation. Crazy ideas like the iPad 14 years ago, remember that was a product where people made fun of the name of the product. It looked like a giant smartphone. We didn't need another one of those, like a giant iPhone. What was so special and unique about it? Nobody had successfully created a tablet before. Why do we need one now? Well fast-forward 14 years, we're through one of these cycles, and now you have a product category from one company that's shipping tens of millions of these devices, these tablets a quarter. A quarter.
And so I observed the pattern of disruption. I observed the pattern of rejection of innovation at its onset. Again, we talk about self-driving cars. We can talk about all kinds of things in AI where perhaps the more preposterous it seems on the surface and on the open, might actually be the key indicator to just how big it's going to be and how much change or opportunity it's going to create within one of those cycles. It's almost like clockwork.
Clint Betts
Yeah. And maybe I shouldn't say this, but I still think Silicon because I run Silicon Slopes, but Silicon Valley still seems like the place to start a company. I mean, when you were starting Matterport, for example, was there any doubt in your mind about where you were? I mean, obviously, you were in the city, you were living there, and all that type of stuff. But was there even a thought to go anywhere else? It really is like the innovation capital of the world.
RJ Pittman
Without question. And to be clear, Matterport's been around for 13 years. I didn't start it, but I came in as CEO in 2018. So I've been there six years leading us through quite an adventurous growth journey. We'll call it that. But having had the choice, there's no doubt in my mind. And I think part of that has been my staying power in the city, in the Bay Area. And Matterport is headquartered right in Sunnyvale, which is at the heart of it all.
I've done companies where, in fact, the first company I started out of school was based in London, England. I lived in London for a number of years. I've invested in companies in New York City, Silicon Alley, and Silicon Slopes. Park City is my home away from home. And I love what's happening in all of these parts of the country, but also parts of the world where we're building hubs of innovation.
No doubt about it. We have to do that because there is fantastic economies, fantastic talent pools, universities, ecosystems that we want to tap into. And a lot of companies that work for are global, including Matterport. So I need that talent to wherever it exists, and especially in these international markets where you want to take your company to grow and expand.
But in terms of the foundation and the fundamental ecosystem, you need to start a company, fund a company, and foster it. There is really no comparison to Silicon Valley. After all of these years and many of these investments, which again I'm super excited about and fully support, even in the toughest of times or the biggest and sharpest of downturns, Silicon Valley is still orders of magnitude more enabling for companies. And I would also say not just more tolerant, but more nurturing of some of these really big, preposterous, disruptive ideas where you need that kind of infrastructure to support the fragility of some of this crazy thinking that just might be the next big thing.
Clint Betts
I think you're exactly right. I don't think there's any question about it. It is interesting, though, when you have this little wave of people leaving the city. And I don't know, when you turn on, well, certain news outlets, San Francisco's burning. Then you go to San Francisco, and it's actually just fine. And so what do you make of how it's talked about? Not to belabor this because it isn't a show about San Francisco.
RJ Pittman
I haven't taken to social media as much until more recently, just because I felt compelled to rebut some of those statements because people just love to stir the pot. And all of those people that fling that into the news and in the media don't actually live here, right? "I came through for a business trip. I took these photos. Boy, this town is dead." In translation, "Hey, I can actually drive from one end of the city in less than an hour for a change. I can actually find parking and get a table at a restaurant," which is not empty, by the way. They are full up. But you're back to a little bit of civility versus where it can get crazy in those peaks, number one.
But two, I'll tell you, this particular one has been more painful, but it's true in every city. Every major city was hit super hard by Covid. The return to work has not at all materialized like the way people thought. So that's had all kinds of impacts on economies in New York, LA, Chicago. I mean, you pick your cities, it's real.
And it's real in San Francisco, but I'll tell you, it's so familiar to me to the same thing that happened in the exodus in 2000 in the dot-com bust. And vacancy rates and all those startup warehouses and buildings right around my neighborhood where I live. Everything emptied out, and a lot of people who came looking for gold headed back home and went back to the East Coast, wherever they came from. And we got the city back to ourselves for a while. And it wasn't before long that that cycle just started revving up again, and we were right back in it, but at a higher level.
And there's no question in my mind about what's happening right now. You see it again. It is like clockwork. People have woken up and said, "Hey, there's actually space in the city again." You can move about the city. You can get good deals on real estate and rent for living and for offices, which is better than it's been in many, many years.
And so you have huge investments coming back into the city like we haven't seen. Buying buildings, moving companies in. AI is now found a new headquarters in the city, and we're just in the early innings again. It's fun to watch it. You stay here long enough, you're going to see the pattern repeat.
Clint Betts
Yeah, that's actually incredible. Tell us about Matterport and how you got to be there because, like you said, you found it, and you came in 2018. What drove you to come in here and lead this company and share it?
RJ Pittman
Yeah, my pattern of, I guess, my career trajectory is a combination of a couple of things. One, grab hold of things that you're deeply passionate about. But two, where can you go and actually have a sizable, if not outsized, impact? And not just an impact personally. That's really important. But I would also say it from an industry and commercial perspective.
As long as I've been doing and chasing the dreams of technology and my passion, I've had sort of a quiet passion right alongside that in real estate, design, architecture, and development. Going back to my younger years, I was kind of taken all across town into different neighborhoods because my mom saw this great opportunity to buy houses undervalued in the markets where all they needed was some TLC, some renovation, and restoration. They could be great places to live, but they could also be great investments that you could sell and then go on to the next house. And I found myself in this journey of design-build, design-build. Not by choice but kind of by necessity because these were the houses that we actually had to live in.
And so if I wanted a bathroom, and my own bedroom, and my own closet built out in this last project that I was dropped into for my senior year of high school, I was tasked with spending my summer building one. So I got a real up close experience and taste of really I'd say the physical world. And at the intersection of technology, which would really fuel my career. The power of this hands-on industry and the power of the real estate industry to me was quite compelling. But it wasn't something I ever thought that I was going to pursue and do much more of than that, but I gained a real appreciation for the spaces we live in, the spaces we work in, the spaces we play in. We go travel and we're on vacation. And so I pay attention to design and architecture just about everywhere I go.
And so I knew perhaps later in my career that at some point in time, after then chasing a number of my own projects in the real estate and design and build category, the house I live in San Francisco, I designed and built myself while doing a tech startup alongside. In the middle of the night, I'd wear a hard hat and flashlights on going through building inspections. In my day, building an e-commerce company.
My wife actually pushed me to the point of saying, "One day, you need to merge your side passion with your career and find something at the intersection of real estate and technology." And coming out of eBay, I was inspired because we managed a lot of different categories of stuff for sale in the eBay marketplace. And you might be surprised to know that there's a thriving real estate category. You can actually buy land. You can buy modular homes and all sorts of cool stuff in the real estate category right there in the marketplace. And I always wondered why it wasn't more prevalent and why it wasn't easy like that to just go on, add to cart, checkout, and buy. We go through these painful processes of escrow, real estate agents, brokers, and all of these things, which is an arduous process.
Where's the role of technology in all of this? When is technology going to disrupt the largest asset class in the world? This is approaching a $400 trillion asset class. It's five times the sum total of all publicly listed companies in the world combined. And here I was in the 2010s and 2020s, and not a lot of interesting things were happening. There are a few Internet real estate portals out there. We know them all. Zillow, Redfin, Realtor here in the US, and they're all around the world, but not much more than that. And so I got quite convinced that there was an opportunity here. And I knew that if I was going to come out of some of the big tech work that I was doing at eBay, Apple, and such, this could be a great place to dig in.
And I actually thought and intended to start a company in the category and get back to my startup roots. But as I was introduced to Matterport, it was one of those ideas. It was one of those tech platforms that just stuck in my rearview mirror. I couldn't get it out of my head. I kept coming back to it, thinking that if we were half right about the potential of what this company represents, this could be quite a transformative platform. And I think there was just a turning point for me where I faced forward and jumped in with both feet and kind of never looked back.
Clint Betts
What's it been like? I mean, what does the growth look like? You started in 2018. And boy, have you gone through a lot in just that short amount of years as everyone has given pandemic and stuff. What's it been like so far?
RJ Pittman
Well, and to explain that, maybe just a bit about Matterport itself. So if you've been out on the internet surfing real estate, and you've been on any of those real estate portals I've talked about, and you find yourself in a 3D walkthrough, what we call a digital twin or a 3D virtual tour of the property, you've most likely experienced Matterport. We power all of the different real estate portals with this technology. It's not limited to just houses for sale. We basically digitize and create these precision 3D models of any physical space.
So that's homes, and high-rises, offices, hotels, Airbnbs, factories, you name it. If it's a physical space, cruise ships, commercial airlines. It's powerful because it gives anybody who interacts with the Matterport digital twin a spatial understanding of that location.
And you can't really get a complete and meaningful spatial understanding of a cruise ship or a house by looking at photos, and videos don't do justice either. You just don't really understand the flow of a property. How high do the ceilings really feel? It's really hard to tell in photography. Especially real estate photography, it distorts the view. Everything looks bigger and more spacious than what's actually there.
And our technology is very unique in that we're not just creating pretty panoramic imagery that simulates 3D. It is actually a dimensionally accurate 3D model down to a centimeter or less. And so that precision is great not only for getting the confidence that what you see is exactly what you're going to get when you go visit that home, or you visit that hotel, or that Airbnb, which is very powerful. But if you happen to own the property or manage it, you now have 3D blueprints for anything from a precision building inspection, space planning, organizing, remodeling, or redecorating because every corner of that property is accounted for and measured.
And today, that technology doesn't exist otherwise. You would have to hire a professional to come out and take measurements just to give you 2D floor plans, and as-built set of drawings are never in 3D. They don't exist, certainly not down at the consumer level. So Matterport was quite a breakthrough. And this was the combination of a hardware and software solution. We have a special camera that got the whole ball rolling many, many years ago. But the very long story short of it is we set out to do something much bigger than that, which is could we democratize this 3D capture? Could we make it so easy for you to pull out your smartphone and scan it with the phone in your pocket?
And the answer is yes. If you capture enough 3D data, which we have now something like 40 billion square feet of space that we have digitized in 177 countries around the world, that's a lot of spatial data. And you can use that spatial data to train an algorithm that can predict and create 3D geometry from the photos off your phone and get the same result without using specialty hardware.
What we love about that is that there are about 5.5, going on 6 billion active smartphones in the world today that are Matterport compatible. So that, to me, is a much larger available market of people that could digitize the space they're in. And you could suddenly go from tens of millions of spaces and 40 billion square feet to suddenly the 4 billion buildings on planet Earth. It doesn't look like such a big number to tackle if you have 6 billion people out there with a smartphone that could capture it.
Clint Betts
Yeah. And that data is invaluable, I'm sure. And how are you utilizing artificial intelligence now with all of that data? It seems like you have a really interesting play there as well.
RJ Pittman
Yeah, that's exactly right. The big unlock for Matterport, which drew me to the company, was the spatial data library. Even back in 2018, with a much smaller footprint than what we have today, it showed me that when I said if we were half right about this, this could be transformative because spatial data can do so much more for us than create a great model. I can now use data science, even traditional software algorithms. But sure, AI will also start extracting what we call property intelligence.
So today, if I have the dimensionally accurate photorealistic 3D model of your property, well, I have an inventory of literally every asset that's in that space. I can tell you how many recessed ceiling lights you have, how many light switches, plug sockets. I can tell you it is not just three bedrooms, but two and a half baths. I can tell you how many sink fixtures, walk-in showers, clothwood tubs, and so on. Even is it a six-burner stove, 36 inches, 48 inches wide? Same for the fridge, etc. And I can also tell you the condition of those things.
Clint Betts
I was going to ask you how long until you can say, "Hey, and that bathroom doesn't work"? How far away are you from that? That's insane. But yeah, anyway, continue. What you were talking about is wild.
RJ Pittman
You're onto something, which is especially true in large cities, San Francisco, Chicago, and LA; getting building inspectors to come out and sign off on your project if you're doing a bathroom remodel or what have you is massively time-consuming. Often, the departments are backed up for six months, and we hear about this, some of just the nightmares of how long it takes to build a house or renovate something in a big city. And that's really true. And a lot of it is logistics. So imagine, maybe it's not initially detecting when something goes wrong, your bathroom's not working, but you want to get it inspected.
Well, the remote inspection can actually be more precise than if you're standing in the space because our measurement tools have much higher fidelity than what a traditional contractor or building inspector brings with them. They're bringing tape measures as an example. Our measurement model captures as many as 3 million 3D data points and measurements in every property or more. No human is ever going to spend the kind of time to get 3 million measurements anywhere, right? Much less for a bathroom remodel. And so it becomes a trusted technology, but also a scalable one. So, building inspector could conceivably visit 20 locations without leaving their desk at the office in a single afternoon.
In fact, what is happening with our enterprise customers is they're doing exactly that. Any of these companies are dependent on a large footprint of physical space, so retailers such as Home Depot, Whole Foods, Walgreens, CVS, and Chipotle are all customers of Matterport. And they have thousands of locations around the country and around the world- tens of thousands, actually. And if they want to inspect their fire suppression systems, take a look at their sprinkler head installations, and confirm that they have the right exit placards for fire safety in all the right locations in all their buildings, well, now you can go do that, and you can do it across all of these locations from a single place in front of your laptop.
And so this transforms productivity night and day, one. But two, it'll start to change the way that people manage, and even remodel and oversee the life cycle of a property, a building, or a collection of retail stores, because the operating system for design build moves to the digital domain.
It makes so much sense, right? We've digitally transformed retail into e-commerce. We've digitally transformed the stock market from everybody hooting and hollering down on the trading floor to the internet because it's so much more efficient. The efficient markets are solved by technology that removes all of that friction. And there have been very few companies in the last 25 years that have really gone at removing that friction in the built world. And Matterport is one of them.
So there's room for a lot more. And because it's such a huge market, it can't possibly be conquered by just one business. But at the same time, what's most exciting to us is this is a new frontier. When we go into a Fortune 100 company, or I go into a real estate office, they have the same reaction. How has this technology not been in front of us before? Where has it been all our lives?
Clint Betts
Which is probably the greatest feeling ever, when you're showing off a product or leading a company, is that exact reaction.
RJ Pittman
It is. And the founder of the company and our chief scientist, David Gausebeck points out something very important in the design principle of the company and really the core product platform, which was he and that early team were exclusively focused on building a product that just works. And let me tell you, having done many startups, coached, invested in them, run them, and even the big companies, it is so easy for our eyes to get bigger than our stomachs. It's a natural tendency.
Focus is not the first instinct. When you're out hustling your company, and you're trying to get business, you'll take it from anywhere. And if you're the first set of customers to say, "We really like this product, we want to add these five things," well then you go chase those five things because you want the revenue, and the next five send you chasing yourself all in circles.
Dave and the core Matterport team really stuck to this principle and said, "Listen, we've got to build a product and a solution that no matter where you drop the Matterport camera, the Matterport technology, it is just going to work." So I can put it in an office, I can put it in a factory, I can put it in a house, and we should be able to get highly consistent results out of it no matter who's standing behind the camera.
And oh, by the way, the camera cannot be an airplane dashboard that requires a college degree in photography or mechanical engineering to operate. Today, the Matterport camera is our most sophisticated flagship product, and it has one button on it. And guess what that button is? The power button.
Clint Betts
Yeah, I was going to say the power button.
RJ Pittman
The power button, turn it on. There's one other button in our app on the phone that controls the camera. That is capture, and that's it.
And the level of sophistication of what it's capturing, 134 megapixel 4K HDR imagery, all of the 3D LiDAR data, 3D point cloud, 3D mesh, and then assembling all of this imagery together to give you everything from a 4,000 to a 400,000 square foot facility assembled together in perfect dimensional accuracy. And it just works, it is a really, really hard problem to solve.
But when you do, that's when indeed it gets really exciting because you have a product that you feel very confident you can drop into a customer environment, any customer environment, and you can deliver great value that's literally the same day. It's not something where they invest in it, and they start to see a payoff in three, six, nine months, or a year. It's literally the same day.
Clint Betts
That's incredible. That's actually wild. What does a typical day look like for you?
RJ Pittman
Let's see. My typical day is a mixture of things. In my role, I think to ensure... Well, let me start that again. A typical day for me is very adapted to the needs of the company at the moment. So I have a big background in product, as you mentioned. And so we're a product-led company, and we do set our company's strategy and our vision inextricably tied to our product strategy and direction. As we are, for example, moving through a big launch cycle, I will spend a disproportionate amount of my time with the product team in engineering, really honing the final mile of the products that we're bringing to market. And there are so many moving pieces that go with that. There are times when we need to really perfect our marketing and positioning and explain some of these new innovations in a language that everybody can understand.
And so, I will shift my time to marketing. Or if it's time for us to really go pedal to the metal in the go-to-market, working with our global sales force, working with our customer success organizations, being out on the front lines, and ultimately in front of the customers is supremely important.
And so I structure my day to make sure that we have robust interaction and engagement in those key functions of the business, but then also complement that with really investing time with our customers. And I'll tell you, that is one of the easiest things for CEOs to talk about and say, be the customer, use your product. Spend time with your customers, listen to your customers. But it's been remarkable to me how elusive that tenant is or how easy it is to deprioritize it, because you allow yourself to get consumed by the problems, the challenges, the issues inside your own company.
Those are always going to be there as it turns out. Your customers, if you don't take care of them, somebody else will, right? And that somebody else, it's not somebody else in your company. That's your competitor or they just give up on you wholesale. And so what I find is the more I am hands-on with our own product, and the more that I'm out in the field with our customers, it creates, I don't know, an energy halo, a leadership halo around not just my team and my execs in direct reports, but the company as a whole. Because they'll look at me and say, "Well, if RJ has time to get out there and use Matterport, and he's scanning properties, and the landmarks, and doing things all over the place, and then he's videoing in from a customer location for a company all hands with the customer at his side. Well, gee, why haven't we made time in our schedules and days to do more of this, right?"
It's really lost art, I feel. And here we are in 2024. You would imagine how could that possibly be? But we get so consumed in the technology, and especially now with much more, how I might describe them, unpredictable technologies like the era we're entering into with generative AI.
It's essential that we are in front of customers and not just immersed in the wonder of these new capabilities and all the new features we can create, but make sure that this is grounded in reality and grounded in whatever we do, start working on, has to be connected back to the people that are going to be putting their hands on it. And that disconnect right now, Clint, I can tell you, is a country mile apart.
Clint Betts
That is such a great point. And I hope those who are listening or watching understand that. That is such a great point. The need for that human connection is not going away. It's only getting stronger, because we are getting lost in these devices. Like, "I could build this, I could build this." And then you look up and six months later, you've built something that no one even wants, doesn't even need because you never talked to anybody about it.
RJ Pittman
That's right. Unfortunately, these long-term effects of coming out of COVID and remote work, and even Matterport is a remote-first company. We have physical locations. We have co-working space and collaboration hubs in a number of spots around the country and around the world, but it's not the same as when it was all in person all the time.
And that goes for customer too. We start to develop these habits. We're in front of our screens to develop products and play with our products in front of all on screen. We're working with our employees through the looking glass of Zoom, and then we're also talking to customers on Zoom.
And while there is some efficiency to that, and maybe a few less airplane rides and hotel bills, nothing replaces being in the field, building relationships with people in person. And it's remarkable how much resistance there is in society or in the workforce right now to getting back to that.
My strong belief is that that has a trailing negative impact on the success of companies and really the role that your products are going to play in the industry. No question about it in my mind. So I think it's really important to push back on that trend, get out there, and do these kinds of things that start to seem a little bit like they are not the norm anymore. "Look at that. These guys are out there talking to customers. Oh my God, that's unbelievable." Why is that such a big deal anymore?
Clint Betts
It's fascinating. I can talk to you forever, but I want to be respectful of your time. So, we end every interview with this question. And that is at CEO.com, we believe the chances one gives is just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?
RJ Pittman
Yeah, I have been fortunate to have mentors and leaders who have bet on my vision. They have taken a chance on me. I oftentimes will say, have given me long enough rope to hang myself, because I'm driven to drive high impact change. And high impact change is high risk.
A lot of people, a lot of companies, and a lot of investors may say that Silicon Valley investors are not that instinctively comfortable with risk. And there's certainly added risk to your idea if you are an unproven leader yourself; as a young leader coming in with these great ideas without the track record to back them up, you need champions.
My champions began with my dad back when I couldn't write a business plan to save my life, but he bet on me. And he said, "You know what? Three strikes, you're out. You need to take some English classes. You got the technology down, but focus on how you can formulate a business case. Take an economics class and formulate your business model. Those tools are going to be invaluable for you. Don't forget them." And he bet on me, and I turned that into something. And I can go all the way through my career. I can talk about some of the biggest bets we made at Apple. Tim Cook at the time was a COO and Steve was still there, and we were taking some big bets in transforming how we brought Apple online, what Apple.com was going to look like, how we would reimagine and reinvent e-commerce for Apple as a consumer tech company, not a computer company for creatives anymore.
And those were high stakes investments that stood to either help make Apple very successful or could also cost us some heavy, heavy penalties in trying to bring an entirely new user base onto Apple through the internet, which is not where Apple started, right? They're a products company at their core, not an internet service company. And so this was all new territory for them.
Tim was one of these guys who, consistently, through his time at Apple, has been on so many people and so many concepts that have done things for this company. And you can see where this is the most valuable company in the world, for the most part. And I don't forget any of these bets, right? The same thing happened at Google, and the same thing happened in my startups. These kinds of people paved the way.
And I would say that by the time I even got to Matterport, the proposition on the table for the company was this could be an interesting company or it could be one for the ages. But if you want the one for the ages, it might be a zero-sum game. We may have to go all in to get to this plateau for Matterport, and it may not work. And I may not be the guy to do it, right? Or I might be the guy who takes this fantastic company and shoots a hole in the hole of the boat. But you don't have to hire me, and I don't have to come in and take on the CEO role. But these are the kinds of things that would be at stake.
And if you choose the safe and the easy path and you want to just, "Hey, if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. Let's stay the path here with Matterport and incrementally, carefully work our way up to success." I'm not the guy.
And those people, those investors, those board members who bet on me means just as much to me later in my career as my dad did at the beginning of my career. And I have to earn that every single time. I have to earn it in the next one. So, the way I pay that back is with all the leaders I work with and mentors that I get to work alongside; it's the same script and the same playbook. I give them a lot of encouragement to take smart risks. I've learned a lot of the hard lessons. I don't want them to repeat some of the easy ones. There's no point in that. Let's not revisit history, so let's take smart risks. But if they flop or they implode on you, I'm there providing air cover, and I'm here to help you get back up, and we're going to take another swing, and we're going to keep at it.
It's that critical moment where you develop people into the kind of leaders who have the courage and the stamina to fail. But not just fail but to really extract the value and the learning from how important it is to take those big swings. And very quickly, you can iterate your way into being a transformative leader for a company. And we need a lot more people like that. We need people like Tim Cooks and Marissa Mayers, who was my boss at Google, who make those kinds of bets on people. Because it doesn't just make the companies better, but it creates, I'd say, a workforce, a society, and an industry full of the next great leaders of our time.
Clint Betts
RJ, thank you so much for coming on. Seriously, it means a lot. And wow, I mean, come back on soon. We barely scratched the surface.
RJ Pittman
Look forward to it. Thanks for having me.
Edited for readability.